There were seven people up in the small Origami Vinyl loft on Wednesday night, and it may have been the largest number of people I have seen there: Tall Tales and the Silver Lining were celebrating the release of their new LP ‘Nice to Meet You Again’ by singing a few of their breezy folk-pop songs all impregnated of the 60-70s Californian psychedelic music.
The songs had a spacey atmosphere and were slowly moving most of the time with twangy bright guitars, even sliding at times, in the background. The band also played a few of their older songs as they have already released 4 albums, primarily composed by songwriter and frontman Trevor Beld-Jimenez who was on vocals and guitar during the show.
Live, the band has a rotating cast featuring members of The Spires, Franklin for Short, Cave Country and the Billy the Kid, and usually Tania, Trevor’s wife, who was not there this time. Trevor’s soft but strong voice was serving well his folky ballads, and he insisted on the fact there were 2 lead guitars. Even though I couldn’t see most of the band members, there was a layering of guitars, which sometimes was even giving a country feeling to the harmonies, and I would even say that some of their older songs had a sort of Wilco/Iron and Wine-esque latent melancholy, but a hippie one, more anchored in the 60s.
It took them almost a year to record their album in a home studio nested in the hills of Highland Park, a Los Angeles neighborhood, and te album reflects this mix of nature open spaces, and urban settings, in the true Californian tradition.